How Restorative Yoga benefits your creative process
Restorative Yoga benefits your creative process by increasing positivity and improving sleep to help boost your creative capacity
Last March, just a couple of weeks after Colorado locked down and all tourists had fled the ski resort in the Rockies where I was living, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself attending a wine tasting - with other humans! Faced with missing out on the most lucrative months of their year, a local wine bar quickly regrouped and got busy coming up with creative solutions.
The morning of the tasting, there was a knock at my door and I opened it to find a bag containing six small jars of wine, each one numbered from one to six, and a sheet with prompts for notes about each one such as appearance, taste and aroma. That evening, myself and a small group of others gathered on Zoom where we were guided by a local sommelier named Jeremy through the tasting. For me, this event marked the beginning of a meteoric rise in creative thinking that has been a surprising and positive hallmark of this pandemic.
Creative thinking may be an interesting benefit of relaxation techniques like Restorative Yoga and experts are beginning to understand why. Creativity has remained at the forefront of scholarly inquiry by psychologists, therapists and now neuroscientists for decades. Creativity provides innovation at the source of all thought; how it expresses is almost infinite, whether that’s abstract painting, writing a novel, or problem solving when you’re hanging off the side of a cliff on belay. It stands to reason that the more innovative thinking there is happening in society at large, the greater the benefit to us all.
Creative thinking is known as “divergent thinking” in psychology terminology and essentially describes being able to think in a non-linear fashion and being able to consider numerous solutions. Even if you don’t work in what might be considered a “creative” field, creativity is still essential to your growth and wellbeing. A simple analogy is the highway model: linear thinking involves taking the same route to work every day regardless of traffic, while divergent thinking allows you to consider different alternatives taking into account the various circumstances that might affect your drive time. When put this way, there’s no doubt that divergent thinking can improve the quality of your life.
There’s also no denying that for many of us lockdown had the opposite effect: increased screen time, stress and loss of connection has left a lot of us feeling a bit numb and depleted. We’ve known for decades that your ability to think creatively is impaired by sleep loss, while a 25 year study published in 2008 found that creativity is decreased by negative mood states such as fear and anxiety, but most enhanced by positive mood states like happiness.
There’s an argument, therefore, that incorporating practices such as Restorative Yoga and meditation that have been found to increase positivity, improve sleep and even potentially make up for lost sleep can actually boost your creative capacity. Access to these benefits doesn’t have to be restricted to those who can afford it, or are free of injury and able to practice active yoga. A simple body scan meditation is a practice of mindful, deep relaxation, bringing awareness to different parts of your body to calm your nervous system that anyone can do lying down for a few minutes each day.
Here’s an easy guide from my book Restorative Yoga for Beginners:
1. In a reclining position, feel the weight of your body against the earth. Notice each place where you come into contact with the earth and feel the support beneath you. Relax into that support.
2. Next, bring your awareness to the soles of your feet. Relax the soles of your feet. Bring your awareness to the tops of your feet. Relax the tops of your feet.
3. Slowly and methodically, work your way up your body, feeling each body part, then relaxing it. Include your legs, torso, arms, neck and head.
4. Finally soften the crown of your head. Now feel your entire body from head to toe, relaxed, soft and heavy. Notice each place where you come into contact with the earth and feel the support beneath you. Relax deeper into that support.
